WORLD DATELINES

Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 1, 1995

Arrest in attack

on Shevardnadze Tbilisi, Georgia An aide to the leader of a member of parliament has been arrested in the bombing that slightly injured Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze earlier this week.

A spokesman for the prosecutor said Alexander Ochorishvili, an aide to warlord Dzhaba Ioseliani, had been arrested, and a search of Ochorishvili's office in the parliament building turned up several thousand rounds of ammunition, machine guns and pistols, and about $16,000, officials said.

Ioseliani has denied involvement in Tuesday's bombing, which injured several people and destroyed several cars outside Shevardnadze's offices in the parliament building. Shevardnadze escaped with cuts and scratches.

Ioseliani helped bring Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, to power in Georgia in 1992, but Shevardnadze has since been trying to reduce his influence.

Israel compromises

on 3 PLO offices Jerusalem In a compromise, Israel will let PLO offices in Jerusalem stay open if they cut ties with Yasser Arafat's autonomy government, a top Palestinian official has said.

Israel ordered three offices to close by Friday as part of its campaign to assert its sovereignty in east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as a future capital.

After meeting Thursday with Israeli Justice Minister David Libai in Tel Aviv, Faisal Husseini, the PLO's official in charge of Jerusalem, said the offices "will continue on one condition: that this will not be connected to, or an institution of, the Palestinian Authority" in the autonomous Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho.

Israel maintained the three PLO offices were run by Arafat's government in violation of Israel's accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which restricts the authority's activities to Gaza and Jericho.

French arrest 20

suspected extremists Paris French police desperately trying to solve two summer bombings have arrested 20 suspected Islamic extremists and seized weapons and documents in raids in Paris and Lyon.

Paris anti-terrorist Judge Laurence Le Vert ordered the dawn sweep. It followed two bloody bomb attacks in Paris and the attempted bombing of a high-speed train line last weekend.

The Interior Ministry indicated that the sweep was mainly aimed at securing information in the failed train attack and that most of the arrests - including several women - were made in the Lyon area. The ministry said the sweep was continuing but did not elaborate.

Thousands cheer

Taylor in Liberia Monrovia, Liberia Hundreds of thousands of Liberians have lined the streets of the capital in a raucous welcome for the warlords who wrecked their country but who promise peace as a new government takes power Friday.

Monrovia, battered by war for nearly six years, became a scene of jubilation Thursday as rebel leader Charles Taylor arrived from his bush headquarters. It was Taylor's first public appearance in the capital of the west African country since 1990, and was the strongest signal yet that the war was at an end.

Under a peace accord signed Aug. 19, Taylor, two other rebel leaders, and three civilian representatives are to take their seats Friday on a Council of State that will rule until August 1996 elections.

2 held in killing of

Sunni Muslim cleric Beirut Two suspects have been arrested in the killing of a Sunni Muslim cleric and an unknown group claimed responsibility for the assassination, which dealt a blow to Lebanon's postwar stability.

Sources close to the Interior Ministry said Friday that the two suspects were Lebanese men. They were arrested in Beirut hours after masked assassins gunned down Sheik Nizaral-Halaby on Thursday, then fled.

The an-Nahar newspaper in Beirut said an anonymous caller claimed Thursday night that a group called the Usama Kassass Organization killed the pro-Syrian cleric.&lt;